


Privation

by darkwood



Series: You. Impossible you. [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Established Relationship, Established Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, M/M, Werewolf Mates, Werewolf Sherlock, burgeoning issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-05
Updated: 2014-09-01
Packaged: 2018-02-06 03:30:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 20,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1842724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkwood/pseuds/darkwood
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For many obvious reasons, John needed to exist in England again. </p>
<p>Simple requirements are sometimes the most difficult to satisfy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jupiter_Ash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jupiter_Ash/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Man and Beast](https://archiveofourown.org/works/496440) by [Jupiter_Ash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jupiter_Ash/pseuds/Jupiter_Ash). 



 

For many obvious reasons, John needed to exist in England again.

 

Simple requirements are sometimes the most difficult to satisfy.

 

It began a little something like this:

 

Mycroft and his mate - whose name was Anthea, John reminded himself for the tenth time - returned to the house in Wiltshire the day after they’d sauntered out of the study, and John was to go with them. Though they had a month relatively to themselves, Sherlock was tetchy the entirety of the short visit, and threw himself into what appeared to be an actual sulk when John got ready to leave. Sherlock was so annoyed that John wasn't even afforded a kiss goodbye before he was bundled into the back of an expensive, nondescript car.

 

That stung, and John hadn’t expected to feel that sort of thing.

 

From the car the three of them got onto a plane. John was given a file to study.

 

The truth was not the story he'd be telling to anyone. John knew he wasn't a masterful liar, but it was getting easier just _not talking_ about werewolves. Perhaps, he thought darkly, learning to omit via torture was an effective method. He'd had to do it since he'd been recovered after the attack. The one time he’d mentioned anything about what he’d actually seen, he’d noticed the telltale look of a doctor about to order a psych eval. After that, John had decided not to mention the rest of what had happened. And then with Russia… well, John would have hidden the truth anyway, but now with Sherlock to think about it would take some rather unthinkably serious things to get him to spill anything true about them.

 

Still, he was glad for Mycroft's little script rendition of what had happened, it almost sounded like-

 

"This is based on the reports from my file, isn't it?" John asked.

 

"Loosely," Mycroft said primly. "You are an incompetent liar. There were several holes that had to be corrected."

 

John wasn't sure how to feel about having his lies made more believable, but there wasn't a better answer for it. He wasn’t feeling terribly optimistic about the entire orchestration of his return. No, that wasn’t it, he felt off… inexplicably _not right_ in a way that he wasn’t sure he had felt before. He ignored the feeling and tucked into the file.

 

According to the file, after the attack on the hospital in Kandahar - blamed on terrorists, which was close enough really - John had been held in captivity in Iran. He had recovered somewhat, and then managed to make his escape, and had headed to Turkey. There he fell ill again and was hospitalized, barely conscious, for several months. Once he'd regained consciousness he indicated he was a Brit, and the consulate had been called.

 

"And I'm going to... face court martial?" John asked when he finished.

 

"I highly doubt any court would find you derelict of your duty for failing to escape from a second enemy held territory after having been tortured."

 

"Did Sherlock read this?"

 

"Sherlock _wrote_ it."

 

"Huh."

 

There were things to be thought about the representation that had been made of him. Things like how Sherlock had written him rather romantic in his double escapes, only to be felled by the inevitable frailty of his body. (John didn’t think of himself as frail, thank you very much, but Mycroft did have a point about that second escape being rather improbable.) Things like how Sherlock assumed he would survive the worst of it all.

 

It sort of made John wonder if he’d have made it.

 

That thought came with the bitter taste of a dry mouth in the scorching sea of sand. When John blinked he could see the glaring sun and feel that weightless feeling of a body without enough blood in it.

 

“Do you think you can remember it?”

 

Mycroft’s tone was soft instead of condescending or accusatory. John blinked back the memories and nodded, feeling that wrong sensation grow within him, like an itch left unscratched. There was nothing for it, though, no cure that could be had. John wondered what Sherlock was doing, and then forced his thoughts away from the dark haired man before they could stir too deeply.

 

As the plane neared its destination, John was given a pair of his own tattered fatigues to change into. He tried not to think about how Mycroft had gotten hold of those. Mycroft informed him that he would be shuffled into another group of returning soldiers that had been in military facilities.

 

"I must warn you, John," Mycroft said as Anthea fixed a falsified treatment bracelet around John’s wrist, "this will not be comfortable for you."

 

"You've never been in the military," John replied, shaking his head.

 

Mycroft favored him with an unreadable look, but did not press the explanation further.

 

The plane landed at a bustling military staging location somewhere in south-central Europe. The buildings were nondescript in a way that spoke of age and economy of construction rather than expense, and had likely been re-purposed so many times it would be impossible to determine what their original use had been. At least John didn’t care to give it a shot, it looked a little bit like the outside of the facility in Russia had, and that sank John’s spirits further than they already were.

 

A tall, broad shouldered man - likely another wolf, or possibly just one of Mycroft's minions - took John away from the plane. John felt oddly adrift as he set foot back on the ground after the flight.


	2. Chapter 2

Germany, again. Afternoon this time instead of evening though, if that meant anything.

 

John had spent time in Hohne Station previously, when he’d been placed in the medical regiment. It had been a while ago, but the area was still familiar. The soldiers that took charge of him from Mycroft’s man were careful to keep themselves aloof as they escorted him from the hangar to the jeep. The trees and the brush were the same green that he remembered from before. He saw the surroundings from the back of a jeep as he was taken from the airstrip to the facility buildings as they headed to the eastern side of the training station.

 

The buildings were drab, military structures that dated back to the time of his grandparents. The whole facility had been taken over and repurposed, of course. There had been some additions, and some upgrading to them, but the overall impression the sturdy military structures gave off was a dreary one. Coming back to it now was like entering an occupied ruin.

 

There was no easy little 'exit interview' with his 'recruiter' - John would have been pleased to have a last, go-nowhere flirt with Pauline - and there was no 'tedious paperwork'. It turned out that when you disappeared from a medical facility in a cloud of smoke and explosives, stayed disappeared for a year, and turned up with a scar on your neck, the army either thought you'd gone rogue or crazy. It wasn’t unheard of for MIA soldiers to turn up, but it was in no way a common occurrence without ransom demands and/or an exchange of prisoners.

 

What there _was_ was an in-processing. John was ushered into one of the re-purposed buildings, some basic information taken from him, his dog-tags checked, and then he was put in a room with a table and two chairs. A bland-looking lieutenant came in and went over some very broad particulars, the sort of thing that verified that he was, indeed, Captain John Hamish Watson of the RAMC. Time passing in the windowless room with its lack of windows and regulation lighting was only tellable by how sore the uncomfortable chairs made his ass. It must have been an hour, maybe more?

 

Once enough detail had been verified, John was taken to a small room in a gray hall with a single cot and no windows.

 

The door closed behind him and the lock snicked shut.

 

It was a sort of treatment that smacked John with similarities to the caged room in Russia, and he had to fight down a rush of panic.

 

Mycroft wouldn’t have delivered John back to their former captors, surely. Sherlock would have known and wouldn’t have allowed it. The wolves had all taken to him, even Rawden-

 

Logic chipped its way into his panicked thoughts with the calm reason of a doctor.

 

John had been missing for more than six months. The army couldn’t account for his whereabouts, or how he had been treated. He had been in unknown conditions for an extended period of time. There was no telling that he had not been brainwashed or programmed in some fashion before he had been freed or released, or if he was somehow infected with something or dosed with something harmful and transmissible.

 

This was quarantine. It was still an incarceration, but also a safety precaution. It was procedure. He had done the same when their own were rescued from captivity.

 

It still felt wrong, and that wrong feeling came with a wave of fatigue.

 

That was ridiculous, the flight hadn’t taken long, and he’d done nothing but rest since leaving that godawful facility in Russia.

 

A set of fresh fatigues was folded on the end of the cot on top of the bedding. There were no identifying patches, and they didn’t have his name on them, but they were clean and there weren’t any holes or worn out spots like the ones he was wearing.

 

John changed from the tattered ones he had on, made the bed, and climbed into it.

 

Despite the fatigue that had its grip on his body, sleep proved elusive.

 

It was the first time in months that he was expected to sleep alone.

 

His stomach clenched at the thought of with whom he had been sleeping previously. He closed his eyes, hoping to escape the reality of the empty room, and was treated with images of Sherlock - Sherlock defiant and naked during their captivity, snarling angrily at their captors when they attempted to take John away.

 

John opened his eyes again, hoping against hope that however long it took them to get on with it wouldn’t be too long.

 

It was a long, sleepless night in a too-small, too-cold bed.

 

In the ‘morning’ - John assumed that though he had not slept the amount of time that constituted a night, what time had passed was sufficient to make this a new day - he was taken from his little room before the morning hall roster for a physical.

 

John stripped down to his vest for blood pressure tests, ran on a treadmill with machines monitoring his vitals, had his temperature taken. Then they had him take his vest off. His scarring was checked over - first the closing wound on his neck, and then he was asked to remove his vest so that the other wound could be looked at.

 

His wolf-wound.

 

The doctor seemed surprised at the sight of it, and had more than a few questions. John didn’t even have to lie much, he truly didn’t remember the injury itself. The adrenaline of the battle, the shock of the wound, and he couldn’t really recall how he’d ended up stretched flat under the burning sun with his uniform in shreds and his blood making poor progress at turning the sea of sand to mud. The doctor took several vials of blood and made some notes about John’s vitals, his overall health - notes that John could imagine even if he couldn’t read them - and there were some more very basic questions about his personal information.

 

“You’ll debrief properly later, Captain,” the medical sergeant - Hall, her nametag read - said as she scribbled on her paperwork. “Someone with higher rank than me, of course. I’m really just making sure you’re not carrying anything contagious.”

 

The sergeant stiffened, as though she realized she wasn’t supposed to say something like that to one of the soldiers, and almost dropped her pen before she busied herself with her paper.

 

The very practical doctor living inside John was pleased to be validated in his assumptions. It did nothing for the uncomfortable feeling of wrongness that lingered in him or the sense memory of the miserable little cot. “It’s ok,” John said, “I’m a doctor, too.”

 

“Right,” Sergeant Hall said, relaxing fractionally and giving a short nod, “that’s… probably why you’re doing so well.”

 

“More likely that’s from the hospital in Turkey,” he replied.

 

Sergeant Hall gave him a small smile instead of a reply, and then nodded towards the stack of his clothes on the end of the cot. “Well, it obviously did you some good. Get dressed, and I’ll make sure there’s an orderly to take you back to your room.”

 

Then she left, and he changed, and an orderly showed him back to the small room where he was being kept pending the medical exam.

 

Growing up, John had never minded being alone. He easily made friends, he was well liked, and he had more than his fair share of girlfriends (and boyfriends), but he liked some quiet from time to time. He could appreciate being solitary as well as he could being in a group.

 

But this was different.

 

Isolation like this was not the same as being given quiet. Perhaps he felt it more keenly because he was kept not only from other human beings, but kept from _Sherlock._

 

The orderly came back, and John was escorted through the hall, passing only a nurse of some sort along the way, and shown to his room. He couldn’t really tell if it was day or night. He figured it was afternoon, probably, and the orderly confirmed it by telling him that food would be brought by once he was settled, and asked if he had a preference of reading material.

 

Not quite a prisoner, then, but there had been books and things in Sherlock’s cage as well.

 

“Anything in English,” John asked, recalling that file Mycroft had made him read, not even having to embellish his desire to read something in his native language much, “a novel?”

 

The orderly didn’t seem to notice the sincerity of his request. He just nodded sharply and exited the room, closing John in behind him as he went off to do his duty.

 

John sat on the cot, rolling his shoulders, and had to suppress a chuckle at the morbidity of his own thoughts, because all he could think was that _Sherlock’s had been a better cage._

 

Just thinking his mate’s name made John’s stomach twist as though rung by strong hands. John found himself grateful that he had only eaten a little of the bland breakfast that had been brought to him.

 

The cot was close, and John slumped onto it, turning on his side against the roiling sensation inside. At the same time his mind raced with wondering. What was Sherlock doing, just then? Where was he? Was he still in Wiltshire with his parents, or had he returned to London? Sherlock had spoken so fondly of London that it was hard to imagine him lingering in the country. Something about that didn’t fit the image that John was constructing of his mate. The house in Wiltshire just didn’t seem the sort of place that would hold Sherlock’s attention for long.

 

The tension in him eased as he imagined Sherlock in London.

 

That night sitting up when Sherlock had told him about London, his words had painted a picture of London as Sherlock saw it. A living, breathing entity that had it’s own likes and dislikes, that pulsed with people and a vitality that went beyond it.

 

That was where John pictured Sherlock, though he couldn’t know yet what Sherlock’s flat looked like or remember what the neighborhood was near.

 

It didn’t matter. He clung to the idea of Sherlock in London, waiting for him, with the wind in his hair.

 

With that image of his mate clenched firmly in his mind, John made it through a second night on the cot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a British military institution in Germany, but I have never been there. I've also never had to be repatriated in any form or fashion, much less a military one. At this point in the story I am writing without the benefit (or hindrance) of research into military protocol on these sorts of situations. 
> 
> It is a fiction, you know.
> 
> Any musings of a fic-related nature can be found on my [tumblr](http://darkwoodwrites.tumblr.com/).


	3. Chapter 3

The night had been terrible, again. After the meal and three chapters of the out-of-date novel he’d selected from the meager pickings the orderly had wheeled down the hall for him, John was left with nothing to do. He was confined to the room pending the results of his blood work, and the four windowless walls weren’t much in the way of company.

 

Knowing that the blood tests would likely be done by morning, John had settled down on the little mattress to sleep off the wait.

 

The only trouble was that he hadn’t been able to get to sleep. He’d tossed from one side to the other, trying to get comfortable with the dull ache in the center of him and the returning complaint of his wounded shoulder. Then it was too cold. He had grown accustomed to a long, warm body curled up against him or around him. And the sheets were clean, but they felt terrible on his skin.

 

Eventually sleep stole him from consciousness, but unlike the first night with its comforting whirl of images of Sherlock, that night John’s sleep was filled with dreams of being lost in a dark, endless expanse. It was a place far too empty to be London or anywhere but the desert that John’s nightmares often dragged him back to. He was trapped. No. He was lost... no. He was abandoned there.

 

He jerked awake violently, coming back to the waking world gasping for breath and with a heartbeat racing from some unknown terror that had crept towards him across that expanse of nothingness he’d been left to.

 

There wasn’t even light coming in around the door. John lay in the dark and waited as his heart slowed back into its normal rhythm and he was able to breathe again. He checked himself over and found himself with a mostly settled stomach. The fluorescent lights clicked on and started humming noisily overhead. It wasn’t quite time to be up - no one had called for them in the hallway - but it was a ‘gentle’ sort of way to nudge them towards consciousness. The lights were far too loud to sleep through.

 

His little isolation room had no windows - John was pretty sure at some point it had been a confinement room, and again tried not to think of the previous purpose of this facility, it just wouldn’t end well - and the bland paint was washed into a sick looking green-gray bearing the blatant nicks and scratches of its previous inhabitants.

 

The soldier that was assigned to the group of them - not that John had yet really seen anyone else in the quarantine hall, but wasn’t that the point? - called the names of those that would be off to the doctors, each ordered by doctor name and then alphabetical down the soldiers, and then those that would be remaining in their rooms, also ordered alphabetically, finally he called out those that would come off the hall after breakfast.

 

John wasn’t sure he was relieved to hear he would be coming ‘off the hall’.

 

He didn’t know what would happen after the hall, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to be exposed to anyone with the sick feeling only just settled inside of him. Surely they’d find something wrong with him and then he’d get tossed back here.

 

_Relax,_ he told himself sternly, _Sherlock never would have let you go if he didn’t know you’d come back._

 

The doors for those being brought off the hall were opened one at a time and John collected his fatigue jacket and went out with the others to head down to the mess hall.

 

John was amid a small group of similarly dressed men, four others all in varying degrees of shamble. Empathy was a part of what had drawn John to doctoring, courage and duty to soldiering. The doctor’s eye in John told him things he didn’t really need to know. He couldn’t avoid the telltale signs of poorly healed wounds as they moved down the hall, or the way the air seemed to clog around them with stifled misery.

 

Unlike other mess halls, the ones that echoed with the sound of knives and forks on metal trays and dishes as the meals were rushed down, loud with the joking and laughing of soldiers with their comrades, this one was near silent. Not all of the soldiers in the room looked broken, so to speak, but no one was talking.

 

There were worse things, of course. John knew a couple. He’d thought his stomach was settled down when he woke up, but being surrounded by these wounded men was doing something new to it. John found he didn’t want to eat much of what was put out for breakfast, but he didn’t seem to be alone in that. John forced himself to eat, pushing through the sullen feeling that had settled in him, knowing he’d feel worse later with an empty stomach.

 

After breakfast they were escorted to the hall again to collect anything that had been left behind and to take care of getting their bedding into laundry bags. Then those coming off were taken to a larger bunk room. This one seemed almost like a normal barracks. There were rows of bunk beds lined up, some empty and some with bedding already on them. There were at least seven other men somewhere, or so the dressed beds indicated. In one corner there was a couch with a television and a remote that had been attached to the wall. There were two guys seated on the couch, both at opposite ends, and a third that was standing a foot behind it as they watched something that wasn’t playing loudly enough to be really made out. In the opposite corner were a couple chairs and a bookshelf.

 

So, a larger sort of a quarantine room.

 

Here, then, was the group of men that he was to go back to England with.

 

When Sherlock had talked about it, the process had seemed quick and simple. It almost had seemed as though John would get off a plane somewhere and be ushered back onto another one to come back to England.

 

The wrong feeling that had been a background hum to John’s thoughts since leaving Wiltshire intensified as he made up the bunk that he’d be sleeping in. John tried to ignore it, but it was very little use. The sheets felt wrong. They were cheap regulation issue, over-washed to a false softness that had more to do with threadbareness than thread-count.

 

As John pulled the sheets taught on the empty bunk he’d picked, he felt a sinking sense of dread, like this was another place he’d be stuck in. The other veterans around the room that he could see all looked haunted, with a pallor to their skin and matching sets of twitchy gazes. It wasn’t a room with much of any hope, despite the impending return home, and John’s spirits sank.

 

" 'I'm very rarely wrong'," John parroted back to himself, thinking of the smug grin on Sherlock's lips when he had explained exactly how 'easy' this leaving the army thing was supposed to be.

 

Apparently, when Sherlock _was_ wrong he was so wrong that he was in a different solar system from right.

 

“Not another one,” an annoyed voice from overhead snorted.

 

Looking up, John was surprised to find the bunk above the one he’d just made occupied, and frowned. “Excuse me?”

 

“Are you going to be one of them shambling, talking to yourself ones that can’t but drool on yourself?”

 

Two clear blue eyes glared at John in angry accusation, thick brows drawn together almost menacingly. The man in the bunk had an almost sinister appearance that was far too vibrant for the washed out room they were in. He seemed alive, but vicious.

 

He made John wary. “That’s a thing to say,” John replied, feeling a particular stab of empathy at the description that had been given to the men around them.

 

“If you’ve enough in your head to be offended, then I guess not,” the man said. He reclined in his bunk, closed his eyes, and shifted slightly where his hands were folded behind his head. He was a tall sort, but from the angle John was at he couldn’t make out much more about the man’s build.

 

John could only see the shoulder of his fatigue jacket, but it was enough to catch the man’s rank even if he couldn’t see the name on the front of it. “I’ll try not to bother you too much then, Colonel.”

 

“Not likely,” the man replied with another snort.

 

Right.

 

John thought about stripping his bedding and picking a different bunk, but he didn’t. He was unsettled enough by being away, he wasn’t going to let one prickly colonel start dictating his movements. Besides, despite the uneasy feeling that seemed to radiate off of him, the Colonel was also the most awake and aware person in the room. There was certainly nothing safe feeling about being near him, but he certainly had a presence to him…

 

Maybe that would help ward off the dreary staleness that hung about the rest of the place.

 

Then he’d get back to Sherlock and he wouldn’t have to think about any of this again.


	4. Chapter 4

Mycroft stood by the kitchen window, looking out on the rear garden.

 

The call had come while he was amid a perusal of the results of an investigation. It was not the investigation that he had wished to be seeing the results of, but he would be one of the first to acknowledge his lack of omnipotence. He was disinclined to answer it, but the phone was presented to him by the only person he could not deny. He had answered.

 

By request, he had left his office, left town, and come out to the house.

 

The kitchen door banged open in the dramatic way that only one member of the household did with any sort of regularity. Sherlock stomped in, barefoot and disheveled from sleep, and headed straight for the refrigerator.

 

It should not be mistaken that any of them - Holmes, Fairfield, or Lachance - were without a temper or a flair for the dark and dramatic, but of all of them, Sherlock seemed to turn their natural tendencies into an art form.

 

“Morning,” Mycroft ventured.

 

“You are the last of anyone that I should expect would call two in the afternoon anything like _morning,”_ Sherlock spat, jerking the refrigerator door open hard enough that the metal of the hinges protested against the force. Sherlock thrust his head into the cold box as though there was something better than food hidden within it, as though it hid his mate from him and the absence could be rectified by a thorough inspection.

 

Mycroft only hummed out a wordless response to his brother’s barb. Sherlock would not like to hear Mycroft’s thoughts just then.

 

Sherlock jerked back from the open door to stare at his brother. “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be-”

 

“You are the last of anyone I should expect would forget my ability to manage surveillance is independent of my physical presence at a monitoring station,” Mycroft replied.

 

Something unfamiliar flashed across Sherlock’s face, but it vanished faster than a hare chased through the woods. Mycroft could not help but stare at that expression, especially when the words that followed sounded so near desperation.

 

“You are supposed to be watching _John.”_

 

“Your mate is safely in the hands of the British Military.”

 

Sherlock slammed the refrigerator door hard enough that the entire over-sized unit was thrust back into the wall with a heavy bang and an oddly low cracking noise as the plaster gave way to the force of the impact.

 

The knowledge of their natural propensity towards demonstrative forms of expression did not make the experience of Sherlock’s particular flair for it any more palatable.

 

Sherlock glared furiously at Mycroft, the sort of look that most often preceded shredded clothes and a rougher-than-playing tumble for the two of them. There had been times, times when they were younger, when nothing less than fangs could settle the air between them, when only first blood was enough.

 

This time, however, Sherlock just glared, chest heaving, shoulders shaking, barely holding back the wolf within.

 

“He is being monitored,” Mycroft replied gently, easily aware of his brother’s concerns. They would be his own, if the situation were reversed. They _were_ his own on those occasions.

 

Unmollified, Sherlock growled, turning back to the refrigerator. He wrenched open the door once more.

 

“You will have to settle down,” Mycroft said, straightening his cuffs carefully. “John will be gone-”

 

The growl dropped in pitch.

 

Mycroft ignored it.

 

“-only the time necessary to discharge him from the military. You said yourself that he would be better suited to an honorable return than the clandestine existence he would have otherwise been limited to.”

 

“I should have made a better story,” Sherlock muttered, entirely to himself. The sound of his voice was swallowed into the body of the refrigerator. He came away from the refrigerator with an armful of food. When he caught Mycroft inspecting it, he met his eyes and said, “Slimming?”

 

Mycroft resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Sherlock could be positively childish when discomforted. It was less than sixty hours since John had departed the estate, and already Sherlock was damaging things and preparing to crawl up the walls. Mummy had been concerned for him, her words of reassurance had failed to reach him, and so she had called on Mycroft for assistance.

 

Who else, of course, could understand the pains of separation?

 

The thought sat in Mycroft’s mind like a boulder blocking a path. It was a bitter lump that sometimes obstructed the desired flow of things.

 

He would never say it to his mother, but he did not appreciate having his personal trials paraded before the rest of his siblings whenever it was convenient. He drew no pleasure from being the family paradigm when it came to restraint.

 

He often wished he could do just as Sherlock was currently doing.

 

A disapproving voice in the back of his head, one that sounded much like his mate, chided him. _What Sherlock is currently doing is suffering._

 

Mycroft straightened his cuffs.

 

No matter his personal bitterness, seeing Sherlock like this did not soothe Mycroft’s own discomforts.

 

There had been other times between them, too. Not for years, now, but there were times without fighting, when the odds were against them and they stood shoulder to shoulder against the onslaught, but that was a given between the two of them that was expected but not so perfectly certain with their extended siblings.

 

Mycroft could pinpoint the change in their relationship down to a single exchange.

 

It had been an introduction he had been eager to make, two people he wanted to know one another so both would understand their importance to him.

 

Sometimes what he anticipated as simple became difficult. The aftermath of that introduction was still echoing through their relationship.

 

Mycroft’s particularly sensitive protective nature was oftentimes nothing short of torment.

 

“I’m taking you to London,” Mycroft announced.

 

Sherlock did not even pause in his consumption of the sandwich he’d made - if the pile of meat could be called a sandwich when it so greatly outdid the bread involved - more than to glance up at Mycroft.

 

There were reasons that Sherlock had been meant to stay in Wiltshire while John was away, not the least of those were his former ‘bad habits’. The lack of John was the sort of thing that might tip Sherlock right back into that behavior.

 

No one had to say this aloud to Sherlock. He had read it from the concerned expressions on various faces. He’d thrown himself into his current strop in response to it before John had properly left. It was truly no wonder that he had reacted poorly to Mummy’s attempts to soothe him, if one considered the source of his bad mood.

 

Sherlock set his sandwich down on the island in front of him and looked at Mycroft. Long fingers settled on the counter amid the chaos of food he had taken from the refrigerator. Sherlock drummed the fingers of one hand, and his jaw tightened.

 

“The city will calm you,” Mycroft added.

 

For a brief moment that strange expression from before flitted across Sherlock’s face, but it was gone too quickly for Mycroft to decipher it.

 

“She could just talk to me,” Sherlock said softly.

 

A surge of renewed annoyance about being the designated role model of restraint had Mycroft grinding his teeth together. There was, of course, someone with more experience dealing with separation. No one ever spoke of it, of course, but Mummy was the most knowledgeable one of them about bonding and mating. Mycroft’s hardships when separated from Anthea for periods of time related to work were nothing in comparison with the separation Mummy had endured from their Father.

 

“She could just talk to either of us,” Sherlock said, hands lying still on the counter as he looked up at Mycroft.

 

Mycroft gave a sharp nod.

 

Sherlock nodded as well, and began carefully closing all the packages he’d taken out. The meat wrappers were folded and tucked in carefully. Where there were ties they were bowed securely, where there were seals they were zipped with all the excess air released from the plastic. He lined up the bottles of sauces and carefully cleaned the edges of the jar tops with a separate corner of a napkin on each before screwing the lids on tightly. Then he scooped up the jars and the packages of meat and returned them all to the refrigerator. He snatched up his sandwich quickly, as though afraid that Mycroft would make a move for it, and brushed past his brother. “After dinner we can go.”

 

Mycroft tried not to roll his eyes.

 

He failed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly, this chapter sort of snuck up on me the other night. Originally the whole of this story was from John's perspective. 
> 
> Apparently I was mistaken. 
> 
> This also means that the projected number of chapters is now 9-ish.


	5. Chapter 5

The dream came upon him sudden and swift.

 

_John knows he is dreaming, but there is nothing he can do about it._

 

_It isn’t a dream he’s had before._

 

_Usually his dreams are of the gunfire and the heat, or, more recently, of the blasting cold and the splash of blood on white snow._

_This is a new dream._

_There is a house. He is in a house, a house that was bigger than the Holmes estate in Wiltshire. This does not mean that the house was grander, just that it is larger. John is the size of a child too short to reach the doorknobs and the tabletops. The high-stretched walls are dusty, with cracks up the plaster and cobwebs hanging thick from the corners and the light fixtures._

_There is only gray light coming in through the windows, and there is dust gathered deeply in the corners of the room._

_In the distance there is the rumble of thunder that rattles through the house._

_No stranger to nightmares, John resigns himself to the torment of this one. He picks the direction that the kitchen would be if he were at the estate, and heads off._

_Even on the bare, dirty floors, his footsteps do not echo. There is no sound except for the rumble of thunder, but light flickers across the windows._

_Something is ahead. John knows this the same way it is obvious in a horror movie that there is danger ahead of the character. The ambient gray glow is sharper, the dirt on the floor is disturbed. A strong light from a few rooms off leads John to a door that is swinging open as though pushed by something on the other side of it._

_He shouldn’t look, he knows he shouldn’t look._

_The dirty floor is damp, isn’t it?_

_Something is pushing the door open._

_Something is-_

 

The bunk John went to sleep in lurched to the side and for all his tense muscles and hyperventilating and sweating, John fell right onto the floor when the bunk tipped over. He woke with the impact.

 

The rumbling sound hadn’t been thunder, it hadn’t been part of the dream at all.

 

One of the others seemed to have had a dream worse than John’s.

 

The concrete floor against his face was a shock of cold after the warmth of his bunk. It jarred John quickly through the groggy aftermath of sleep. His eyes snapped open, then went wide as he strained to make out his surroundings. The room was only dimly lit, with light shining in through the high windows over the doors to keep the space from being entirely dark without the overheads on.

 

John pushed himself up. As his eyes adjusted, he could see that it was the Colonel from the top bunk that had lost it. In the light bouncing in from the halls, the large room was a forest of the bunks with the dark, solid shapes of the other soldiers spread through it. It looked as though what disturbed their bunk bed was the impact of a body. The groaning lump that had sent it toppling over was one of the larger occupants of the room, if John was able to make out the shapes properly.

 

In the television corner the Colonel stood, obviously wild eyed even in the dim room, facing off against several of the other soldiers.

 

Apparently the Colonel was not so well off as he made himself seem.

 

None of them were at their best.

 

John scrambled to his feet, socks slipping a moment before he moved towards where the Colonel defending his corner.

 

The Colonel repelled a second opponent roughly away as John moved forward. The shoved man impacted with another of the bunks to send it careening out of the way. Without bodies in them, the bunks were just hollow metal frames with the inconsequential weight of the shitty mattresses. The thunder noise came from the metal frame scraping across the floor. The noise of the bunk falling over on its side seemed louder to John than the tipping of his own had been.

 

Someone was at one of the doors, banging on it and shouting against the crack to get word out into the hall. If anyone else was speaking, John couldn’t hear them. There was only the grunting of men trading blows.

 

John paused as he reached the break in the bunks to more closely take in the struggle. The Colonel stood with his feet apart, fists raised defensively. One of the other soldiers lunged forward and was repelled by a vicious hook.

 

_Not going straight in, then._ In a head-on attack, the Colonel would best John. No matter John’s skill at boxing, which was rusty and now had to contend with his shoulder wound, the Colonel was taller and broader, a fact made all too obvious by the bulk of him cast in silhouette in the dim light. John would go down, bested by the reach and panicked strength of his opponent, just as the soldier who had been dropped by the left hook. Part of the Colonel’s advantage was surely the dim light, of course, but that was only part. Whatever had set the man on alert had done none of them a favor.

 

Some other tactic, then.

 

Leading that hook had taken the Colonel a few steps out of his corner. As another of the soldiers moved forward, John edged around behind them. Then, on instinct and moving quicker than he thought he could, John darted forward and hooked both arms around the Colonel’s neck.

 

The Colonel surged upright, dragging John off his feet in the process. Strong hands reached up and clawed at his forearms, but it was John’s shoulder that protested with a sharp pain. The Colonel thrashed, trying to dislodge John. John’s shoulder screamed at him as he clung, wrapping his legs around the taller man’s waist to hang on. Thankfully the others found an opening, and pressed the advantage. The three of them took the Colonel to the floor, trapping John beneath him.

 

The Colonel growled with what air he had left in his lungs, struggling beneath the weight, and John held on desperately, despite the gouges being dug into his forearms by the man’s blunt nails. Still he held on, despite the pain in his arms. If he let go, John knew it would end badly. He clung to the man.

 

Time slowed down, then. The lights came on, and there was the rushing of feet as the sergeant - Hall, John remembered - and two nurses rushed in. John still hung on to the Colonel, even as the others invalids moved away and were replaced by the appropriately over-sized orderlies. At last the doctor jabbed a sedative into the colonel, and the man jerked futilely before going limp.

 

The entire weight of him pressed John back into the cold floor, and John struggled to breathe under the weight.

 

This was like…

 

This was _just_ like…

 

And then the weight was gone.

 

John gasped for breath, trying to shut his ears to the sounds of other members of the medical staff hurrying into the room to assess the damage done to the invalid soldiers. Sergeant Hall knelt over him, and John closed his eyes against the too-bright light as gentle fingers touched his arms.

 

“Captain Watson,” she said in an empty voice, “I need you to come with me. You’re bleeding, Captain. Are you alright?”

 

Fingers touched his cheek.

 

Blinking against the bright light from the overheads, John tried to make sense of what was around him.

 

A face swam into focus. He wanted that to be Sherlock. He wanted the utterly inappropriate reaction to his injury to be nosing and licking at it, and he shut his eyes again as the Sergeant grasped him by the elbow and urged him to his feet. His balance was off, but he followed along into another corridor. Where he was lead he could hear some low talking, and then the grip on his elbow urged him onto a flat surface.

 

 

*


	6. Chapter 6

Mycroft had been right to bring Sherlock back to London. In Wiltshire he had been rotting, turning into a hateful creature unable to function and lashing out because of the stagnation of the place. London was better, but even London, in all its writhing glory, was empty of the one thing that Sherlock needed.

 

They would probably never know what it was that set Sherlock off.

 

Sherlock wasn’t even sure what it was. One minute he was languishing in his flat, focused on ignoring the dearth of John and the ache of being without him, and the next the ache was something harsher. It was raw, it was huge, it was a gaping chasm that Sherlock teetered on the edge of.

 

All he could think was that something had happened to John. Inside him the wolf raged at the very notion of it, but that was the only conclusion that Sherlock could come to. He had been irritable, he had been annoyed and despondent, had felt _alone,_ but there was nothing about those feelings that was even remotely like what had come crashing down.

 

The weight of the feeling, or rather, the _lack_ of feeling brought Sherlock down.

 

The wolf paced, ranting and raving against the implication that John had been-

 

**_No!_ **

 

John was _strong,_ John would _not_ be taken down by anything.

 

John had promised he would return.

 

Mycroft never spoke in any informative or personal way about his separations from Anthea, and with what small remaining parts of him were not howling with distress over John, Sherlock hated that his brother had kept those thoughts silent. Some sort of warning would have been appreciated. If he had been warned, perhaps he could have prepared.

 

Sherlock hated Mycroft for that in the same way that he was 'vexed' with Mummy.

 

The blackness of doubt stretched, and then it did not matter, because the gaping chasm was vaster than any words could have prepared him for, and there was no way not to fall in. He fell.

 

Sherlock did not notice that he went to his stash.

 

The last vial of his old preparation was kept tucked away secretly where neither Mycroft nor any of his other siblings or their mates might find it. It was carefully hidden, but ready for use.

 

He did not feel the pinch of the needle or the flush of his skin as the drug emptied into his vein.

 

All Sherlock knew was that the endless, gaping _lack of John_ retreated, and he couldn’t feel anything wrong anymore.

 

The nothingness was a terrible feeling after how he had come to feel John.

 

It was also effective.

 

Sherlock knew it wouldn't last. It couldn’t. He could already feel the angry wolf within him burning through the chemicals he had instinctively injected, knew his body was working against his mind, but time was very different when he was under the influence, and all those thoughts came very quickly and somehow without hastening the end of the high in the slightest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Provided Sherlock can manage to cease his interruptions-- _yes, I am looking at **you** , Mr. Holmes! _ \--the story appears to finish with a chapter 10. This chapter, again, snuck up on me out of the blue. (Reminds me of one of the character's comments about Sherlock: _He jerked to the side, surprised that he hadn’t noticed Sherlock standing by the windows. It wouldn’t be the first time the tall man had seemed to materialize behind him, but it still shocked him every time._ )


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter would not have been born today without the assistance of the wonderful [Covenmouse](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Covenmouse/) who gave it a read through and had very wonderful corrections for me.

 

* * *

 

 

In the morning, John woke in a soft(er) bed in a room full of other beds with sleeping bodies. His forearms hurt, his scarred shoulder killed (his other one wasn’t much better), and if he could think far enough to identify the rest of his body parts then he would probably complain of the entire back of him. Concrete had never been very forgiving, and being slammed into it and then trying to hold a thrashing guerrilla was no way to become reacquainted.

 

It was the third morning without Sherlock. John’s stomach sank as he came to realize it was a small, empty bed that he was lying in.

 

A weary looking Sergeant Hall was checking clipboards a few beds down. When she noticed he had woken, she came over to the bed. “How are you feeling this morning?” she asked.

 

“Like I’ve gotten into a fight with heavy machinery,” John replied.

 

“The colonel has been put back in a private room,” Hall said. She moved closer, checking the bandages on his arms. “What happened?”

 

“I woke when the bunk pitched me onto the floor,” John said, honestly. “I think I stepped over someone when I went to help the others with the guy. I know he downed at least one more. Are they alright?”

 

“Some broken bones, a broken nose, and a few concussions,” the sergeant replied. “Apparently you _all_ decided to fight heavy machinery.”

 

John chuckled at that. “Mass delusions of immortality,” he managed between his mirth.

 

“Was he acting suspiciously at all, Captain?”

 

John hid his frown at that question. It was not uncommon for psych evals to be detrimental to a soldier. John had known a few career soldiers that had ended up behind desks because of the wrong answers being given in a moment of stress. Telling the truth could end a career, and though John had no love for the Colonel, he wasn’t sure what it would mean for an officer like him to lose his job. John could even understand the sentiment. Before his own injury, before Sherlock, the army hadn’t just been a job, it was his life. The army had his friends and colleagues, and had been a better family in some respects than the one he had been born into.

 

He didn’t know if it was right to take that away from someone else who might only need a bit of help.

 

John wasn’t fond of lying, so he chose his words carefully. “Seemed to think everyone else was a bit brainless.”

 

“Brainless?”

 

“Washed out, I guess,” he said with a slight shrug. “You have to admit we’re all a bit gray in here.”

 

The sergeant took a note, and John withheld a wince and a curse. He wasn’t staying in the service, of course, he had Sherlock and the military would never let the two of them be together the way that civilians could chose to be, but he didn’t need the army to write him off as a nutter.

 

She must have read concern on his face, because she reached over to pat his shoulder reassuringly. “I asked about him, not you,” she said. “It’s ok, captain. Try to get some rest.”

 

John closed his eyes, hoping for sleep but not counting on it, and let his thoughts wander as he checked himself over. Beneath the ache in his body, he still felt that sense of wrongness, as though he was adrift somehow, but there was no clenching of his stomach like when the feeling was at its worst.

 

The morning was never as bad as the evening, for some reason.

 

He hated knowing that, but figured it was better than the ragged edges of himself he could feel in the evenings.

 

After lunch he was returned to the bunk room.

 

The Colonel was notably absent, the bunk over John’s stripped of bedding. John changed his sleeping position anyway, uncomfortable with the recollection of the fight and the dream before it. The other soldiers seemed to appreciate the act, and John learned a few names that he tried to hold onto.

 

There was Michael Timothy - a hard name if only because the man had two first names and the slim smile when he’d told John everyone called him ‘McTim’ was so drained of enthusiasm that John preferred not to think about it. McTim was one of the three that had taken the Colonel down on to John, along with Joshua Anson and Donald Crouch. The two men who had gone into the bunks so hard were in the hospital room that John had woken up in, as was the man who had taken that vicious right cross.

 

The rest of the room’s population seemed to shy away from John, either from the display of strength from that night, or just a general need for personal space after whatever had brought them to the room they shared.

 

Time passed sluggishly, two days of listening to the soft groans of the wounded, of familiar speech that took John right back to where he'd been when he'd been in that military hospital in Kandahar. None of the talkers - McTim, Anson, or Crouch - had much to say beyond general personal information. John listened to how they had gotten there, but only with half of his mind. He didn’t offer anything back. He didn’t know what to say.

 

John felt like he had sprung a leak somewhere, and he was losing the contents of himself out of it. He thought he'd hit five days without Sherlock, and he wagered that if he listened hard enough when he was eating he might actually hear the food fall into the space emptying out inside of him. He imagined that the sound of the impact would echo on his inner walls.

 

The doctors checked his dressings and cleaned his cuts, and he let them. The gouges ached, throbbing whenever he brushed them against anything, and though his right shoulder had faded into the usual sort of present-but-not-noticeable feeling, the left one, the wounded one, remained an agony.

 

It was worse because he couldn’t remember it all. He had no associations with the original wounds, just vague memories and a knowledge of present pain. He was smart, and anatomy classes were easy enough to recall so he could match up what was hurting with what had happened, but knowing it intellectually was just not the same for him. He couldn’t move his arm and know in a visceral fashion that ‘that was because of the gunshot’ or determine ‘that must be from the bite’.

 

All he knew for certain were the clinical details. There had been a gunshot, and that had hurt. John could recall the feeling of it vividly without knowing any specific manner of describing it. He though that maybe the pain had been like a fire. But then maybe the pain was delayed by the shock?

 

What he could remember after that was the teeth.

 

John still had no idea if wolves were territorial to the point of engaging in tactical assaults, or if there had been something done that was too far even for a creature that hid among humans to remain hidden with the amount of outrage(?) at some trespass, but there had been wolves. There was blood and teeth and-

 

Even thinking about it sent a shock into the agony of his shoulder.

 

He hadn’t been aware enough to hear his own prognosis from the doctors who had treated him once he’d been brought back to base camp. He knew now, empirically, that he had lost fine motor skill in his left hand, and that he likely needed physio for it.

 

He knew now, from the scarring, that something had **ripped** into his shoulder.

 

When he tried to think of the moment, he could only recall flashes.

 

John thought that maybe if he could remember what had happened to put him in the first hospital, he could make the dreams stop. So when the part of the day came when the occupants of the bunk room were brought back from the evening meal, and after the talkers fell silent as the evening became night, John set himself a task. He tucked into his bunk, and for as long as he could stay awake, he tried desperately to remember exactly what had happened to him that night in the desert.

 

None of the trying worked, though. The attempts colored his nightmares, but the real memory hovered just out of reach, leaving him with only dark figures and the flash of wicked teeth. On good days, surely, he would wake knowing he was fine, but on bad days - and just now they were all bad, all empty and lonely - John woke with the feeling of teeth sinking into him.

 

Just like that, John got stuck on his wolf wound. The bullet and the bite in his shoulder went round and round in circles chasing each other, half-memories and wild imaginings that he couldn’t confirm or deny. It was disorienting, but that could have had to do with the weakness that bringing the Colonel to the floor had made, or the way his old wounds sang a new song of pain in the aftermath.

 

Other concerns melted away, though his stomach still turned itself in knots and nightmares filled his sleep at the persistent absence of Sherlock every night.

 

That… had to be the cause, didn’t it?

 

Perhaps it was something else. Perhaps it was a delayed reaction to what had happened initially. Perhaps his nightmares had less to do with the _lack of Sherlock_ and more to do with the _experience of trauma_.

 

The world closed up around him.

 

The other occupants said nothing. There was an unspoken agreement that none of them trespassed into anyone else’s agitation, whenever it was possible. The vicious fight with the Colonel had been enough of a lesson there.

 

In the boxy little room with its drab walls, the crushing feeling of failure radiating from the other invalided soldiers soaked from into him. Even their exercise time - something that had been instituted after the incident with the Colonel as a precaution - was bland.

 

That was a bit odd, honestly.

 

He was given time for his arm to heal a bit. On the third day - he _thought_ it was three days, if you counted meals and trips outside as markers for days - after the incident more tests were run on him. Drug screens, organ function, the whole lot.

 

John told himself it was just precautionary. He’d been six months out, he reminded himself, and then he’d been injured inside the facility. He tried to ignore the way all the colors around him were fading, the way that everything was turning gray, and the ache in his stomach that was growing more insistent.

 

After the incident, though, the medical staff were treating all the invalids cautiously.

 

On what ought to be the fourth day after the incident - which would make it the seventh since he’d left Sherlock, a nagging sensation in his gut and the back of his head reminded him - there was a therapist waiting for him to talk to.

 

The therapist wanted to talk about what had happened to him. It might have been prompted by the way John had taken to eating less and less at mealtimes, but that could be blamed on the selection. Most of the inhabitants of the bunk room were eating light.

 

“Let’s just work our way backwards here, Captain.”

 

First it was the scuffle, and how did John feel about that?

 

John held back his grimace and retold the therapist what he had told Sergeant Hall. Any caution he’d felt before about maintaining active duty status for anyone involved was muted by the echoing space inside him.

 

The questions shifted, and then it was about his escape.

 

John told the story from the folder as best he could remember it. He had his hiccups, places his throat felt too dry to continue, but rather than seeming disingenuous, his responses seemed to authenticate the story. John was glad of it, because he couldn’t do better. The color seemed almost gone out of the world, by then, all leeched away somewhere John couldn’t find it.

 

“And before that?” the therapist asked, flipping a few pages in John’s file. He seemed frustrated by something, as though John was not being as forthcoming as he ought to be. “It says here you were wounded in Afghanistan, originally. Gunshot wound with some animal scarring. What happened?”

 

John didn’t have much to say about it, and the folder from Mycroft - the folder from _Sherlock_ didn’t have an answer there. So John stuck with the truth. “It’s… hard to remember.”

 

At that the therapist made a soft humming noise and took a note in his folder.

 

The questions became more leading, then. John knew there had been little information taken from the scene. Obviously the soldiers from the unit that had gone in had seen the carnage, would have debriefed about it, and then there was Murray. John could remember Murray’s frantic care as soon as the patrol had found him, the way the man had been devoted to his extraction and survival…

 

The leading questions ought to be helping him remember. That was what they were designed to do, John thought, but all they managed was to give John a severe headache.

 

That was about when the doctor began treating John as though he'd lost a part of his mind.

 

Hell, John was starting to _feel_ like he'd lost a part of his mind.

 

Finally the therapist released John. That was terrible as much as it was wonderful, because the entire ‘chat’ had him turned around and twisted. That last set of questions - all the things about what had happened in Afghanistan - were the ones that were the problem. The whole walk back to the bunk room, as they passed through every door, John expected to run into a wall of heat as he had in the desert. But this gray-walled facility felt more solid than the one in Afghanistan, and the tents had never been much good at keeping all the heat out. Still, John staggered as he returned to the bunk room and collapsed on his bunk.

 

At least horizontal he couldn’t fall down. John closed his eyes and let the disorientation take him. He fell asleep amid the swirling confusion, and could not tell how long he was out when he woke again.

 

When he woke things had stopped spinning, but from the movement of the others in the bunk room there didn’t seem to be any addition to his measure of time. Able to find that much confirmation, John clung to his awareness of time’s passing, unwilling to let go of it. If he could measure time, then he might be able to keep hold of the truth. He would not be trapped forever away from Sherlock.

 

Time could now be marked by only two things. The healing of his arms (the length of time from the late night incident with the Colonel) and the ache of time that stretched between him and Sherlock. John found himself using both, only because it was nice to have a lesser measure to think about.

 

Well, he used both when he could be reminded of time passing. It threatened to blur together, getting harder and harder to distinguish.

 

What ought to be the next morning - another meal and then the lights were out for a while, but maybe that was John falling asleep after lunch and missing the afternoon exercise period? - John could no longer deny how much was different. The twisting of his stomach had given way to what was now a constant, sharpening ache. John's hand - the one down from his wounded shoulder - started to shake, he lost his appetite, and he was forgetting what it felt like to be warm. He thought of Mycroft's warning that it would not be 'comfortable'. This went beyond that. There was something wrong with him, and the malady was getting worse.

 

Whatever was wrong didn't show up on the tests, though, not beyond a slightly low blood pressure. John was physically healthy, if a bit undernourished. There was a lot of quieter murmuring about the twitchy arm and lack of appetite. John didn't need to hear it to know that the doctors thought he had PTSD.

 

They told him anyway. In the morning, several days later - how many days was it now, anyway? - an officer who was decidedly not Pauline told him in flat terms that John was no longer suited to military service and would be returning home.

 

Honorable discharge, _of course._

 

The words didn’t register properly.

 

It was far more painful than John had thought it would be, especially given that this hadn't been his life for nearly a year.

 

His life had become hospitals and _Sherlock._

 

Just thinking of his mate sent a pang through the hollow husk of himself, and John did his best to keep it hidden the same way he’d been hiding the rest of his troubles from those monitoring him.

 

Being told he ‘no longer suited the military’ was a harsh message to absorb. He was reminded, dully, of his concern of depriving the Colonel of what the army could mean. John had to admit that the army had come to mean all of that very intimately to him, before he ever knew he needed a Sherlock.

 

By then, so long without Sherlock, John could feel that there was less of himself. What had once been _John Watson: soldier, doctor, survivor, mate_ had become just _John Watson: invalid soldier._ Being told that he was no longer a part of the army hurt. It subtracted him down to _John Watson: invalid._

 

In the grayness that had become his existence, in the absence of Sherlock, having the army taken away was a staggering blow.

 

The therapist was at that little conference, and when he observed John’s shell-shocked reaction, he wrote John a referral to a counselor that would be covered by insurance.

 

To top all that off, they contacted John's next of kin.

 

For a moment, John’s hope surged in him.

 

_Sherlock-!_

But then he realized that they meant Harry.

 

_Of course,_ the hollow thought echoed in his brain, _there was no real way to have that changed until later. Of course, it would look suspicious if it changed on its own, or if he changed it to some stranger._

 

John could think of nothing worse than Harry at the end of the most miserable week of his recent existence. He could barely figure out how he was going to make it from the facility into London at all.

 

Then they solved that too, because they put John on a train into London.

 

 

*

 


	8. Chapter 8

 

When Sherlock did not respond to phone calls, Mycroft was unimpressed but unworried.

 

There was an old rule: If Sherlock did not to reply to _a text,_ then a check-in was in order.

 

Texting was one way to always reach Sherlock. A well composed text was Sherlock’s preferred method of digital communication. It was instantaneous, and it allowed for precise use of vocabulary to deliver the sender’s exact meaning. He was as ruthless with them as he was with deductions of those who riled his ire. Sherlock had once replied to a text with his claws, just so he could snipe at Mycroft regarding… well. It didn’t matter anymore, really.

 

It was so unlikely that Sherlock would reply to a phone call that Mycroft could not even say why he had bothered calling at all.

 

So Mycroft went about his business, and for two days did not think about his brother or the absence of his brother’s mate. He had more to do, after all, than fret about Sherlock’s well being. Following up on the leads regarding Sherlock’s disappearance, for instance, or the ongoing negotiations with the northern pack, and there was always the trouble in the Middle East to be sorted through.

 

When Sherlock did not respond to an inquiry about his well being placed _via text,_ however, Mycroft became concerned. Standing rules applied.

 

Mycroft had not been _given_ a key to Sherlock’s flat on Montague Street, but he did not require a key to access anything. He was, after all, the more clever of the Holmes brothers, according to popular opinion, and it was not exaggeration to say that Mycroft did certain things _better_ than Sherlock.

 

Even as he _thought_ that, Mycroft regretted it.

 

Inside number nineteen, Sherlock was curled up on the couch, high as a kite with his nose buried in one of John’s shirts. He did not acknowledge Mycroft’s entrance.

 

There was no way to be _better_ at grief, and if there were, Sherlock appeared to be a better wreck than Mycroft ever was.

 

That, again, was the bitterness of comparison lacing Mycroft’s thoughts with their acidity.

 

Thankfully, Sherlock was in no fit state to pluck it out. If he were, no short duration of tantrum would answer it, Mycroft was sure.

 

“Two at once, I see,” Mycroft said with a scowl.

 

Ignoring his brother, for the moment, Mycroft leaned his umbrella in the corner and took a brief detour into the kitchen. The table space would be useful later. Only once that was arranged did he return to the sitting room.

 

Mycroft crossed to the sofa. He disconnected himself from what must now be done, as he had the last time it needed doing. He went through the motions as with any other detestable task. Rather than a yank, he grasped Sherlock by the nape of his neck. Rather than snatching vest and the collar of his silk dressing gown along with it, fingers closed around the material and tugged. Then it was an easy flex of arm that brought Sherlock to his feet, and Mycroft frog marched him to the bathroom.

 

Sherlock did not struggle against Mycroft. He was pliant in Mycroft’s grip, disturbingly so.

 

The seeming lack of independent will angered Mycroft. This was not the Sherlock he was accustomed to, and he hated the thing that had taken residence in his brother. For a cruel, bitter moment, Mycroft thought of dunking his brother’s head in the bowl of the toilet to shock some reaction out, but that sort of pettiness was beneath him. The very thought of it offended his own nasal sensibilities. Instead he let Sherlock slump on the toilet, ignored his brother’s glare and the low growl of incoherent threats, and stoppered the sink before twisting the tap to fill it.

 

This was not the sort of sobering behavior that would be of any use to an intoxicated human, but Sherlock’s body would be working in Mycroft’s favor on this.

 

Another flex of muscles brought Sherlock over, and Mycroft dunked Sherlock’s face into the sink full of cold water.

 

A twitch in response, then a yank, and Sherlock attempted to rear up in protest. Mycroft expected it, so he was able to ignore it. Sherlock managed to pull his head up enough to get a gasp of air before Mycroft pressed his advantage. Twisting his fingers in his brother’s hair, Mycroft pushed Sherlock’s face back down into the water.

 

Even though Mycroft _knew_ there would be another surge of his brother’s strength, he was unprepared for the full force of it. When Sherlock snapped backwards the second time, a full body jerk, Mycroft was sent staggering backwards into the shower.

 

Sherlock grabbed the sink edges to keep himself upright.

 

In response Mycroft let out a snarl loud enough that it rattled the medicine cabinet’s mirror on its hinges.

 

Sherlock got his feet properly under him and launched forward, but his movements were impaired by the drugs. Mycroft caught the arm that Sherlock swung up towards his face by the wrist and wrenched it upwards as he took a step around behind Sherlock. Sherlock retaliated by throwing his free arm backwards, elbow aimed at Mycroft’s shoulder, but Mycroft hooked his left ankle around Sherlock’s and pushed two steps forward. A savage shift of Mycroft’s weight brought Sherlock back down and pinned the younger wolf awkwardly against the sink once again.

 

A wide eye rolled back to glare at him angrily.

 

Much more of this tussling would break porcelain or ceramics in the bathroom. Neither of them were light-handed when dealing with the other, and this would go on too long if it was allowed.

  
There was one thing that Mycroft could think of to take the fight back out of Sherlock.

 

“What would John think?” he snarled into Sherlock’s ear.

 

It was the only thing that had managed to call Mycroft himself out of the foulest mood he had ever been in, and just as it had worked on one brother it worked on the other.

 

Sherlock’s struggles died and he pressed his eyes shut.

 

Then they opened again, snapped wide, and that wild eye rolled back to find Mycroft’s and a harsh, accusing voice snarled, “He’s _not here!”_

 

Obviously the adrenaline had jump-started the metabolic processes. Sherlock looked more sober already.

 

“Self-medicating will fail to rectify the situation as surely as destroying the bathroom,” Mycroft replied, releasing the firm grip he had on Sherlock cautiously. First he eased the upward yank on Sherlock’s arm, letting it go slowly. When Sherlock remained in the slump, Mycroft took a cautious step back.

 

Released fully, Sherlock’s knees went down and he crumpled to the floor at the base of the sink. His split lip and sodden curls were making a mess of the dressing gown with water and a trickle of blood. Mycroft could detect the symptoms of the sobering that their particular metabolism - well fueled by the the shock of the water and the adrenaline of the scuffle - were inflicting on his brother. He looked miserable.

 

From personal experience, Mycroft knew that Sherlock _was._

 

“I have cleared a space on your kitchen table,” Mycroft said, departing the bathroom. He straightened his clothing as he headed into the kitchen. There was no reason for both of them to look like vagrants.

 

It was several minutes before Sherlock followed, brows furrowed. A pinched look tightened his features beyond the usual intensity he wore.

 

“Apparently you _do_ possess some manner of domestic aptitude,” Sherlock sneered.

 

From inside his jacket, Mycroft removed the file folder. It was a bit worse for the jostling in the bathroom, but the clasps and paper clips had kept everything tucked appropriately inside.

 

Sherlock snatched it from him almost before it was out of his jacket, and fell into the chair at the table. He opened the folder and planted his elbows in the area that Mycroft had cleaned for just that purpose.

 

“Bergen-Hohne, of course,” Sherlock murmured, flipping the pages of the report. His eyes darted back and forth across the page and Mycroft was almost impressed at the attention he paid them. “Of course. Scheduled for a psychiatric evaluation.” Sherlock flicked angry eyes at Mycroft. “They won’t medicate him.”

 

“I am certain the doctors in the facility will treat John in the manner they see fit,” Mycroft replied.

 

Sherlock shuddered, almost violently, and his lips curled back. “They _won’t,”_ he insisted. “See to that.”

 

“Something you wish to share, brother?”

 

Sherlock offered nothing but a growl before turning his full attention back to the file.

 

“I take it you have some reasoning behind your insistence.”

 

“Would you suffer through your mate being altered by medication?” Sherlock asked dismissively, flattening the file on the table top. He was finished with the reports and had moved on to the pictures.

 

“So, for this particular chemical alteration you found worthwhile, we have your mate to blame?”

 

The words were out of Mycroft’s mouth before he could stop them. Though he regretted them as swiftly as he had his thoughts upon entering the flat, he could do nothing to stop them.

 

Sherlock went dangerously still, and Mycroft waited patiently.

 

A breath later Sherlock was on his feet and Mycroft was pinned to the cabinetry, with the lip of the counter top digging into his back. Sherlock snarled at him up close, eyes dark with fury. Teeth snapped at his cheek, too sharp to be human. The eyes that stared him down were more wolf than man, as was the threatening noise coming from Sherlock’s throat.

 

Mycroft knew he deserved this rebuke. He did not fight his way free.

 

“That was excessive of me,” Mycroft said, lowering his eyes in apology.

 

Sherlock shoved, once, pushing his weight into his brother. Strong hands gripped Mycroft’s wrists warningly before they released. “You of all people should know better,” Sherlock grumbled, much more himself as he sank back into his chair, all the fury drained away.

 

“Do you blame me, considering the state I found you in?”

 

That query received no response. Sherlock went back to staring at the pictures of John, silent and still.

 

His spirit seemed entirely absent as he sat like that. Mycroft found it hard to look at him.

 

“Why are you _here,_ Mycroft?” Sherlock grunted after several minutes in the stalemate of silence. “You should only be here if you are bearing _John._ He is not in this folder.”

 

“I believed that some assurance might be required,” Mycroft replied.

 

Sherlock huffed in a large breath, puffing up to snap his next accusation. “What good-”

 

“I would wish it, were the situation reversed,” Mycroft said softly.

 

Again, Sherlock’s bluster lost all its force. He looked up at Mycroft for a moment, as though sheer stubbornness might bring back the fury of his anger, but there was nothing. Sherlock gave up and turned back to the file in front of him. He stared for a long moment at the little collection of pictures, and flipped the top one over. Sherlock stopped at the next one, as though entranced by it. “I want him back,” he said in a low voice, running his fingers along the photograph.

 

It would be improper to say that this was the first of his brother’s black days that Mycroft had stood the brunt of. Mycroft thought he had weathered them well, in the past. He was accustomed to the violent tantrums and the self-abandoning drug usage. Sherlock was many things, and in his dark moods he proved to be many more than at other times, but there was always a struggle to Sherlock, a chaotic whirlwind of life even when he was upset or despondent.

 

Now it seemed that Sherlock’s strings were cut.

 

It could be the drugs. The aftermath of Sherlock’s habits was different every time, as though the wolf within him enjoyed figuring out new consequences to add to the rapid detoxification.

 

Mycroft was unaccustomed to the level of despondence he could read in his brother, though. The had to be more than simply the drugs. The brother that Mycroft knew was gone, and in the admirable wolf’s place was left this listless, pining thing.

 

This was not unlike when Mycroft had brought his mate home to be introduced.

 

Well.

 

Not unlike insomuch as one might liken the spray from a garden hose to a monsoon.

 

It would not be exaggeration to state that this was among the worst of Sherlock’s fits.

 

“Soon, brother,” Mycroft assured him.

 

Sherlock didn’t even flick his eyes in Mycroft’s direction.

 

Leaving the file where it was, Mycroft left the kitchen. He forced himself the few steps to where he had left his umbrella, hoping that Sherlock had been sober enough when his mate’s name had been invoked to take the question to heart. A childish impulse within Mycroft thought to text that to Sherlock, but for once that day he managed exemplary restraint and left his mobile in his pocket.

 

Neither did he carve the question into the wall by the front door.

 

Whether or not he thought of doing it the entire ride back to his office was his own business.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You chastise one Holmes brother, and the other takes his place in the category of upstart. I will say that I rather enjoy Mycroft's little 'visits' to us. 
> 
> If I were being 100% timeline accurate, this chapter would have to be inserted within the previous one, however, part of the point of the last chapter was the loss of time John experiences during the separation. Thus it was impossible to be entirely accurate regarding the timing of it, though perhaps I could have positioned this before the previous chapter. Either way, this is where I placed this chapter, and I like it's positioning.
> 
> I will say that this is **by no means** the way one sobers up from a dose of drugs. If you encounter that situation, you should contact healthcare professionals. 
> 
> What I _will_ say is that I am understanding the wolf physiology to be similar but different to humans, drawing from Jupiter_Ash's source material for that, as well as my own body's tendency to be that 3% of the population that gets whatever odd side effect they don't expect you to get from taking a specific drug. In this instance, Mycroft has jump-started Sherlock's metabolism by a method he learned via trial-and-error during the... shall we say the heyday of Sherlock's drug usage.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John returns to London.

John wasn’t really aware at the start of the trip. Exhaustion had brought with it a heaviness that he was unaccustomed to, and he had named the different pains he felt until he no longer cared enough about what he was calling the pain - _ache, malady, torment, misery_ \- to give it any attention. He was feeling it, after all, and that was enough. He was a mess with shaking hands and half-crossed eyes and a shooting pain in his hip that gave him a limp.

 

There were three trains and various stopovers for John between the base in Germany and London. Somehow traveling the distance back to London filled out the empty space that had been gaping within him.

 

As the train sped him across the miles from home - the miles _from Sherlock_ \- the clench lessened in his gut. The weight of exhaustion faded enough that John could feel the weight of himself. All those unnamed hurts - _the cricks, the cramps, the straining_ \- again took on their names.

 

By Paris, John found he could focus his eyes.

 

Somewhere between Paris and London, John managed to catch his breath - something he hadn’t even realized was a problem prior to taking a suddenly unhindered inhale - and the gray that had taken over his vision became less of a haze. The world of gray became more articulate at first, and then even the gray cast of things began to let up as the train had sped him towards London.

 

It was early evening when he arrived, and the London St Pancras station was bustling with bodies moving to and from trains. John kept hold of his duffle and wandered through the crowds, buffeted by more determined walkers and the cacophony of voices echoing all around. Despite the improvement in his senses, or perhaps because of it, the volume of the station and the press of bodies was almost overwhelming.

 

Harry found him by the exit they’d always met at when they were younger. She took one look at him and ushered them both out into the street.

 

Harry was drunk.

 

She did well covering it, but she was.

 

John was sure she had good intentions at one point, probably to do with bundling her invalided baby brother back to her flat, but somewhere along the route to collect him that altruistic sibling protective impulse had gotten diverted. All the grayness of the world and shaking of his hand didn't prevent John from thinking the worst thing he could think of.

 

It was a dark, terrible thought, and once he thought it through, he couldn’t un-think it.

 

_Maybe Harry had only tripped up this time because of him._

 

And that dark thought stared at him accusingly, the way dark thoughts like that always did. It tripped John a little as they headed along, but even the guilt that was threatening wasn’t enough to dampen the relief that he felt just being in London again.

 

Sherlock would be here somewhere.

 

John’s heart sped up at the thought of that. His mate was somewhere in this city, and soon he would be with Sherlock again.

 

But first there was Harry, that dark thought reminded him.

 

Once they were free of the crowds of the station, Harry slurred out his name and stumbled into a hug, and John held his breath and offered her a hug back.

 

“Oh god, John,” she huffed into his neck.

 

John tried to focus on her, but it felt wrong. The wrong pair of arms were around him, the wrong body pressed to his, the wrong worried voice rasped into his ears. There was no way to say to her that would make sense. The lingering ache in him was keeping him from thinking straight. He couldn't remember the script Mycroft had given him to read, and without it John knew he wasn't a good liar. Especially to Harry.

 

Thankfully she was too drunk to bother with much talking. The hug ended and John found his arm grasped firmly as Harry steered him out into the street. The evening was pushing on, but there was a coffee shop open. That was their destination.

 

What a sight they must have made. John with his military uniform and the meager bag over his shoulder, Harry in her work clothes with her over-sized shiny purse. If they didn’t look so similar they would probably have looked like a couple, John thought as he let Harry bully him into a chair before she went to the bar to get drinks.

 

London felt _better._ John couldn’t even compare the way he felt tucked into the chair in the coffee shop to how he had felt on the train, and it was nothing like the fog of the previous days in Germany. The ache was fading, miraculously, and the clarity of his vision was starting to admit a bit of color. He looked out into the darkening street and lost himself in the colors that the sunset painted things. Here felt better, felt right. It felt like if he looked long enough he would find Sherlock somewhere out on the street, just waiting-

 

A hot, strong smelling cup of coffee was placed in front of him. “Cream, no sugar,” Harry announced with a bit of a slur.

 

“Thanks,” John managed, covering his surprise with a soft grunt.

 

Harry took the seat across from him, and the words between the two of them seemed to just stop. She stared at him like he was some kind of a miracle, some wonderful thing. It was somehow an awkward sort of look, the kind he was only used to from patients in the field, and the sort that Harry had never managed for anyone, to John’s knowledge. He picked up his cup and took a sip of the too-hot coffee.

 

“They said you were dead.” Harry wrapped her hands around her own cup and blew on the hot liquid. Her voice was gruff, either from drink or the weather, but it suited what John supposed was a black stab at humor. “Well. That’s not how they put it, of course. Some utter twaddle about ‘missing in action, presumed’ and all that. But the notice was pretty clear. They never expected to find you.”

 

“I’m a bit surprised myself,” John said, mindful that shorter responses had less a chance of backfiring on him.

 

Harry stared at her drink, her shoulders shaking.

 

Unable to watch her pain without offering something, because he was and always would be Harry’s brother, and brothers simply did not do that sort of thing in John Watson’s book, he reached out and liberated one of her hands from her cup to take in his own. And it wasn’t fair, of course. The look Harry gave him when her eyes came up to look at his said that she knew just how unfair it was of her. She squeezed his hand and shook her head.

 

She took a long drink from her cup and gathered her wits about her. “Sorry. Forget it,” she said, squeezing his hand again. “So, is that all of your stuff?”

 

“It is.”

 

“We’ll get a cab then,” Harry said, nodding to herself.

 

John’s chest threatened to seize up on him. He couldn’t go with Harry. He had to find Sherlock!

 

He shook his head, covering it with a sip of his coffee. “I’ve got a place to stay.”

 

Harry gave him a flat look.

 

“A… friend,” John said, shifting his cup.

 

Harry’s look remained concerned, but she nodded. She’d known him through the height of his prowess, had heard his friends joking about his nickname when they’d bring him back from the pub on the off-night when he was too drunk to end up trotting off home with someone. “Old or new?”

 

“New,” John said, because even though it was nothing like what she was thinking, this was easier than the truth, because there was no way to explain _Sherlock_ to Harry just then.

 

“Am I going to see you again before you ship back out?” Harry asked.

 

John looked at his sister, and everything that had been there before was still there - the shouting, the drinking, a number of hurt feelings and a string of broken promises. But there was more than just what was there before. Before, Harry had been untouchable, isolating herself by putting the alcohol between her and the rest of the world.

 

Now she… well.

 

She was still drunk, but she was here. Time was if she was drunk, the rest of the world could go fuck itself.

 

That brief glimmer, that sliver of hope struck John with the force of a bullet train, and he was saying, “Not going back this time,” before he knew his lips were moving.

 

There was silence in response. Harry’s hearing caught up a moment later, and her expression shifted to one that was unreadable in the face of the rest of John’s troubles. “Oh, Johnny,” she slurred, reaching for his hand. It was just a peek of how much alcohol she’d likely consumed, but it was enough.

 

John reminded himself that to his regular acquaintance, losing thing military would be devastating. He looked down at his coffee and understood the loss she was imagining, but that hadn’t hit him yet.

 

Then Harry was moving again, letting go of his hands and searching through that big shiny purse and her phone was thrust at him. “Take this.”

 

“Harry, I can’t just-”

 

 _“Take it,”_ Harry demanded. “That way I’ll have your number. When I get a new one I’ll ring you. You know, in case you need a place to stay, or a chat, or… anything.”

 

John stared at it. He ran his fingers along the case idly, not sure what to say, and that’s when he felt the marks on the back. Turning it over, he saw an inscription on the back. The phone looked new, and whoever had bought it for Harry had gone far enough to have it engraved. He frowned and held it out. “I can’t take this.”

 

“You can and you will,” Harry replied, face stern and unforgiving. John had never been able to tell if that was a look she had learned from their father or their mother. “Look, Johnny- John. I need to know-”

 

The end of that sentence could go about fifty ways, all of them were desperate and bad. John couldn’t deny the impulse to interrupt.

 

“I have no idea how to use this thing,” he sighed.

 

“You’re a doctor,” Harry said, “you can figure out a mobile if you can figure out the human body.”

 

John glanced at the clock on the wall and Harry turned to look.

 

“Right,” she said, “If you’re meeting up… you have to go.” She nodded to herself but didn’t seem inclined to get up from the chair.

 

Faced with the prospect of a longer uncomfortable discussion and escaping into the evening, John heaved himself upright. He left the partially drunken coffee on the table and bent to put the phone in his bag. Harry caught him in a hug before he managed to get himself upright properly, and John staggered a little bit at the force of it.

 

It was awkward, when Harry let go, but there was an awful lot of awkward between them anyway. John nodded to her, shouldered his pack and the two of them made their way out onto the street.

 

It took some doing, but John packed Harry into a cab, and then looked for one of his own - just as he realized he didn't actually know Sherlock's address on Montague street.

 

He was still standing on the curb when two strong, familiar hands caught his shoulders.

 

The contact was a shock, a rush of warmth that seared away the cold that had stolen into him. Impossibly, all at once, the ache vanished and took every kind of pain he had named (and several he hadn’t) with it.

 

“I’m here,” a deep voice rumbled against his ear.

 

The relief that spread through John as Sherlock moved up against his back was even stronger than the first. The color came back to his vision. John’s knees went weak and he closed his eyes against the brightness. His hearing was sharper, had to be sharper, because he swore he could hear Sherlock’s pulse. The overload of sensation was downright unnatural, and so welcome that John couldn't help but groan in relief.

 

"You smell like the floor of a bar," Sherlock groused at him with a pointed sniff. "I'm surprised your sister made it here in-"

 

"Don't," John warned, turning in his mate’s arms. He buried his face in Sherlock's neck and put his arms tight around his mate. The conversation with Harry wasn’t over, of course. She wasn’t done asking, and she was a _Watson,_ after all, not well known for surrendering in the face of adversity or social niceties. John had dogged a bullet, that was all, nothing much to celebrate. And yet he felt giddy with release. The absence of the ache made John dizzy, and his arm was still trembling. He gripped Sherlock tighter against the sensation. "I don't want to talk about Harry. Just shut up and take me home."

 

Sherlock lifted a hand, and another cab pulled over. John let himself be tucked into the cab without protest because Sherlock kept a grip on him and followed swiftly after. "Nine-teen Montague street," he instructed the driver. Then he pulled John close, tucking him against a warm side.

 

Neither of them spoke until the cab delivered them, neither allowed space between their bodies. Sherlock wrapped long fingers around John’s neck, measuring his pulse, and buried his nose in the hair behind John’s ear. John dropped his head back to Sherlock’s shoulder and got a handful of the wool wrapped around his hip. The other hand, the free hand with its tremble was caught in Sherlock’s own. Those long fingers smoothed John’s hand out straight and stilled it.

 

And this was right, this was what had been missing, this was where he belonged.

 

Sherlock barely released him long enough to lead the way up to the flat.

 

John didn't even notice the decor. He only had eyes for Sherlock as he shrugged out of a posh, ridiculous looking coat and snatched John back into his arms. John let himself go pliantly wherever his mate’s hands nudged him as Sherlock bent and sniffed behind his ear, then down his neck, and began peeling layers off him so quickly it was as if the clothes had personally offended the man.

 

And that was fine, really. That was more than fine. John hadn’t realized what else he’d been without when he was without Sherlock, but he had a sudden urge to be as naked as was humanly possible and to have Sherlock _all over him_.

 

Sherlock froze at the sight of the bandages, half-done with John’s clothing and not started on his own. That was as much of a bucket of cold water thrown on John’s desire as the harsh demand of, “What are _those?”_

 

“Bandages,” John said, shaking his head. His head was swimming with thwarted desire as Sherlock’s attention shifted from a very obvious _‘get John naked’_ to _‘what happened to John’._ John closed his eyes to breathe in against the feeling. He was surprised when he was pushed to the bed and long fingers began unwinding the bandages.

 

“Sherlock, I need those,” John protested.

 

“We’ll rewrap them,” Sherlock replied, removing the gauze with careful hands.

 

John hadn’t bothered to look at the wounds on his arms while he had been in Germany. He left that to the doctors and nurses. He’d barely registered their cleaning, in the days that had followed the fight, hadn’t the strength to care about it. Now they seemed important, if only because Sherlock was noticing them. So when Sherlock climbed atop his hips and lifted his arms up, John joined him in looking.

 

“Larger than you,” Sherlock said absently, tilting John’s arm with gentle hands. He brought John’s other arm up, crossed them, but dismissed the positioning with a snort. As though dealing with puzzle pieces, Sherlock shifted them until they were in the choke hold John had used, and nodded. “You had to incapacitate someone. Another soldier, then, also invalidated from service, somehow. Larger than you, just look at the size of the gouts his nails made in your arms. Taller, as well.” Sherlock drew John’s forearm up and licked across the wound with a gentle tongue. “What was his name?” he murmured against John’s skin.

 

“No clue,” John answered honestly, still feeling overwhelmed by the relief and by Sherlock’s focused attention. “They never said.”

 

Sherlock frowned, eyes narrowing. “You’re sociable. People talk to you about things. I’ve seen it. When they should be silent they find reasons to, things to say. Why-”

 

“He did talk to me,” John replied, turning his head away before Sherlock’s gaze could swallow him whole, “but he didn’t say his name. And he was a right tosser, so I didn’t ask.”

 

A low, displeased grumble came out of Sherlock at that, but he made no further comment. He ran his tongue against the angry wounds on John’s arms, exploring each of the healing marks in turn, and then frowned. “We need these covered up. They’ll open again.”

 

Then Sherlock’s warm weight was gone from his lap, and John was left to huff out, “Told you to leave them.”

 

His mate came back, tossed a roll of gauze on the bed. Sherlock was no doctor, but the worst of what had happened was past. Agile fingers smoothed antiseptic across the angry wounds, and then the gauze was up and wrapped. The whole procedure was done first on his right arm where the damage was worse, and then repeated on his left.

 

John was not used to… to being tended to like that.

 

He choked on the sensation of _Sherlock_ tending to him now. He’d been empty for so long that he didn’t know how to feel the wonder at his mate’s touch. He wanted to _climb into Sherlock_ so that they would always be touching. It was a relief, it was a blessing, but it was too much. He ached for it at the same time it was happening to him. He tilted his head back and closed his eyes against the tears that threatened.

 

It was too much, really. All of it, all the feelings packed in the span of an hour, and…

 

Fuck.

 

There were the tears stepping right over threats and into existence.

 

Couldn’t they backtrack a bit to the tearing off of clothes and the welcome-home arousal?

 

"You smell like- What hurts, John?" Sherlock asked in a low, urgent rumble. "Where else did they hurt you?"

 

John could only shake his head. "Just tests, Sherlock, they didn't... I just... it hurt."

 

Sherlock continued checking him over, but stilled. "Words, John. What hurt?"

 

"I don't know," John growled. "It just... the longer we were apart, it hurt, alright? The tremor in my arm came back, everything went gray, I... I don't know."

 

"You looked fine on the pictures, I thought you-" Sherlock cut himself off. "I thought it would just be me." The words were spoken very softly.

 

For a moment, John’s thoughts stuttered. Then a flip switched inside him. Something uneasy stole into him, and anger came with it. He clenched his left hand, but it shook anyway. Sherlock’s gaze fixed on it, and his brows drew together in confusion.

 

“I’m sorry, what?” John asked, finding his own feet and pushing Sherlock off him and away.

 

Sherlock pressed his lips together, straightening up well within John’s personal space and inspecting him for a moment. Reading him, deducing him, whatever.

 

The anger flared.

 

Why the hell did Sherlock need to read him to answer?

 

“Be more precise,” he finally replied.

 

“You said ‘the pictures’,” John said. Sherlock didn’t react to that, so no, that mustn’t be what he was concerned about. Something else, then. “What was supposed to be ‘just you’, Sherlock? You _knew_ about this?”

 

"As everyone is so pleased to remind me, I've ignored the usual way of things," Sherlock sneered, "I couldn't _know_ anything."

 

“But you could guess,” John replied, taking a deep breath against the feelings flooding him. All his relief, all his elation had turned to feelings of betrayal, and that was the perfect fuel for his temper. Sherlock watched him closely, and as John settled into the flush of his temper, Sherlock’s expression tightened and closed up.

 

“Withdrawl,” Sherlock said, chin lifted in a challenging tilt.

 

Right.

 

Right. More of this, then.

 

It was one thing for Mycroft to challenge him in Dresden, or for Temperance to be nosy, or for Aldrich to be defensive, but this was Sherlock. This was his mate. His mate who glossed over the important parts when they had time without surveillance to discuss that sort of thing, and who seemed to forget that John was _not a wolf_ and thus did not immediately know all things _wolf-related._

 

Right.

 

"You people need to make a fucking handbook," John snapped, turning away from Sherlock. "Because I'm pretty sure 'physical withdrawal' is something you could have mentioned!"

 

"It's not my fault you can't come to a logical conclusion."

 

The words weren't spoken in any tone harsher than the sneer Sherlock had used moments before, but it was a slap in the face. John's whole body tensed.

 

"Come now John, you're a doctor. If my presence at your side induces a particular rise in serotonin levels, a release of oxytocin, wouldn't it stand _to reason_ that my absence might have some equally chemical _ill effects."_

 

John stooped and grabbed his vest from where it had fallen on the floor. He jerked it on, then snatched up his fatigue jacket on his way to the front door.

 

 _"Where_ are you going?" Sherlock demanded from behind him.

 

_"Out."_

 

It was impossible to tell if the growl in the room came from him or from Sherlock, by that point.

 

John made it to the front door, but he only got it a few inches open before it was slammed shut by a long-fingered hand. John squared his shoulders and set his jaw. "Let go of the door, Sherlock."

 

"No," Sherlock growled at him. The tall body crowded up against John's back, but John didn’t lean into that wanted contact. He held his ground, only flinching when Sherlock said, "I just got you back, I'm not letting you go again."

 

"You don't get to shout insults at me and demand I stay in the room with you," John retorted, glancing back at his mate.

 

A grudging acceptance was written in Sherlock's face. He leaned off John's back, but kept his hand on the door. "Not out. It's late."

 

"Fine," John grunted, shoving his fatigue jacket at Sherlock.

 

He turned back into the flat and took it in. The sitting room was a jumble of things out of any order whatsoever. Now that he looked, _really looked,_ the flat was a wreck. The door to the left must be to the kitchen, if the tile was any indication, and the one on the far side of the room had to be the bedroom he’d just stormed out of.

 

John headed for that, warning, "Do _not_ follow me."

 

The only answer Sherlock gave was the vicious twist of the deadbolts.

 

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was unhappy with last week's delay of posting and the chapter ending up in this week, so here's chapter 9.
> 
> I know this may not have been the reunion that everyone was expecting, possibly on anyone's part, but this wasn't what I was anticipating when I started this either. ( _If_ I was even anticipating anything. Writing these two is honestly sort of like gambling, and isn't that appropriate?)


	10. Chapter 10

Sometime later, after a shower in a surprisingly immaculate bathroom, John frustrated himself to sleep. It was the only way there was of describing it, because he neither fell into sleep nor did he pass out. He exhausted his way right into it, taken by the agitating lack of ache.

 

After the weeks of trouble, sleep without the pain ought to have been blissful, but instead the darkness behind John’s eyelids tormented him. He was back in the over-sized house that was a menacing sketch of the real one in Wiltshire.

 

_The halls around him tower over him, hung with shadows and spider webs. The windows are draped in dusty curtains._

 

_John’s footsteps echo on the floors, a fading signal that he is alone in the endless stretch of hallway filled with closed doors._

 

_Pausing, John turns to look behind him. It is the same as what is in front of him. There is only one way to go, no matter which way he turns. John chooses the way he started with, heading in the direction that he has to go if he is going to move at all._

 

_The echoes of his movements are answered by the muffled noise of voices._

 

_The light is dim in the hall, and the doors are all closed, but as John recognizes that there are voices there is light beneath all of the doors. Stepping closer, John puts an ear to the one closest him, but the murmurs go silent._

 

_No listening in, apparently._

 

_Retreating from the door, John feels the first icy prickle of dread._

 

_He runs._

 

_He runs the way you run when you’re on a moving walkway, far too fast to be real and with dread at what happened when the moving stopped._

 

_At the end of the hallway is the kitchen. It’s an odd doorway made odder by the gray light coming in around the curtains in the tall windows, and John is too short to reach the doorknob, and there is red on the tile floor seeping under the doorway--_

 

At some point in the nightmare, John started screaming. He must have, because his throat was sore as he woke, and the room sounded quiet the way quiet only feels after a loud noise. He only woke because Sherlock intruded, and despite knowing from experience that it was a _terrible_ way to wake a soldier from a nightmare, John was glad for the way his mate’s long body had him thoroughly pinned to the mattress.

 

"A dream, John," Sherlock said. Despite - perhaps because of? - their earlier argument, Sherlock's voice was low and worried. Wide eyes stared into John’s from up close. "I'm- You're alright. Just a dream."

 

Once the immediate shaking stopped, John's muscles gave out and he flopped back onto the bed. He was _freezing,_ and even the warmth of the body on top of him wasn’t getting through that. "You were going to say, 'I'm here'."

 

"After our earlier argument, I wasn't sure that would be a comfort."

 

"This isn't exactly comfortable," John said.

 

Sherlock climbed off him and then off the bed. He stood awkwardly beside it for a moment, hovering. His eyes darted over John from top to bottom, and then he edged towards the door. "I'll just... go back, then."

 

"Stay," John said.

 

Both Sherlock's brows quirked up in surprise. "I thought-"

 

There were ten or twenty things John could say in response to that, but what he chose was, "Hold me."

 

Sherlock required no convincing. He climbed back into the bed, still dressed for the day, and wrapped his arms around John. "John," he sighed fondly.

 

The tension that had crept into John since the fight ebbed, and he sank shivering into Sherlock's arms. He wasn't sure he'd be able to sleep, but his mind began to slow down, and his breathing began to even out.

 

"I'm sorry," Sherlock whispered into his neck.

 

"Apologize in the morning," John sleep-mumbled in response.

 

*


	11. Chapter 11

“--impossible to explain this sort of thing to anyone else, you see. They can hear the words and they may try to listen, but they don’t bother to _understand._ There’s just you, John.”

 

John woke up, naked, to one of Sherlock’s one-sided monologues.

 

A few weeks ago - it couldn’t be more than two, could it? - that wasn’t a strange way to wake up. It was less strange waking up naked with Sherlock than it was that they were in a high-security cell somewhere in Russia.

 

The problem _this_ morning was that John had gone to bed with clothes on.

 

Of course the first time he’d gone to bed he hadn’t Sherlock in bed with him, and the second time he had.

 

Before John had decided he was properly awake, Sherlock stopped his soft monologue and said, “I am sorry, John.”

 

Peeking an eye open, John was nearly blinded by pale, naked skin of his mate in the morning sunlight. Sherlock was sitting up, and had gathered John into his lap.

 

“Mm.”

 

Sleep had cleared up some of John’s earlier confusion. He was still annoyed with Sherlock, but mostly he was just glad to have him back.

 

“I was not in control of myself, which is inexcusable, and the pain of... our separation left me in a bewildered state, I was... not myself, John.”

 

“Mm,” John repeated, considering.

 

“The trembling in your arm went away shortly after you fell asleep the second time, which leads me to believe that my proximity has, in fact, cured your more physical symptoms of-”

 

“Sherlock.”

 

“John?”

 

“Will you shut up a minute?”

 

Sherlock closed his mouth, frowning. It only lasted a moment before he said, “This is no way to make up, John. I can’t apologize if I’m being silent. Why would you ask for that, of all things?”

 

“Because I’m trying to figure out exactly how to explain that you are not allowed to strip me naked in my sleep before we’ve made up from a row.”

 

“ ‘Allowed’ implies some sort of agreement on terms.”

 

“It’s a relationship, there’s give and take.” John sighed.

 

Sherlock sighed a mockery of John’s. “You continue to speak as though we are still fighting,” he said. “I have apologized. It will not happen again, as there was obviously some error in various, previously sound judgments.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

But Sherlock wouldn’t answer with more than a slight shake of his head. He leaned down in an impossible curve of his spine, and kissed John firmly on the lips.

 

John sighed into the kiss, very glad to be back in the arms that he belonged in.

 

“It will not happen again,” Sherlock broke the kiss to say, in a tone that brooked no argument.

 

John thought he might start keeping a list of things that Sherlock said that were like that. He was starting to wonder if Sherlock had ever been in a relationship, or if being mated had just scrambled the man’s otherwise highly functional brain. Though, no, the gap between expectation and assumption seemed only present in things related to John.

 

“Anything can happen,” John found himself saying.

 

Sherlock snorted at that, kissing him again before asking, “Have we concluded fighting?”

 

What he wanted, just then, was for Sherlock to move on from having gotten him naked. But Sherlock had asked a question, and…

 

John wasn’t sure, to be honest.

 

Sherlock huffed, shifting the two of them so he could stretch out beside John. Level with his mate, John found that even if they were fighting, it still felt nice to have Sherlock up against him.

 

“Maybe,” John conceded. “If you tell me what else you can ‘reasonably assume’ or ‘logically conclude’ about this whole mated thing.”

 

“That,” Sherlock replied, “will require some research.”

 

“How do you research that sort of thing?”

 

“My siblings. Marianne is not quite as active as I am, but her job does take her from home. She may very well be away now, considering the research being done regarding our captors,” Sherlock said. He leaned into John as he spoke, tightening his arm around him. “And there’s always Mycroft.”

 

The surprise at the though of Sherlock going to his siblings for help was… well. It was something.

 

In the painful intervening days, John had all but forgotten that discussion in the library. Now that it was mentioned again, though, he recalled a question that he failed to ask at the time. His intent to question was interrupted by a growl of complaint from first one and then both of the empty stomachs in the bed.

 

“Takeaway,” Sherlock announced, kissing John again before rolling away and to his feet. “How do you feel about Thai?”

 

“It’s fine,” John replied, confused at Sherlock’s sudden motion.

 

“Cup of tea,” Sherlock said, pulling on his dressing gown and heading into the living room.

 

John stared after him for a long moment, surprised to find himself alone in bed after the prior night’s tirade about ‘just gotten you back’ and ‘not outside’ and all the nudity that had happened between then and now.

 

Sherlock’s head reappeared in the doorway, and the pale eyes of his mate rested on him as though he might manage to disappear the moment he went unobserved. Rather than comment on it, as he found himself feeling the same way, John climbed out of bed.

 

“The blue one’s yours,” Sherlock said, fixing John in his gaze firmly before disappearing into the living room again.

 

Puzzled, John looked around the cluttered bedroom, and on the back of the wardrobe there was hung a blue robe. John had ignored it the night before, thinking it another piece of Sherlock’s detritus, but as he took it down he realized it wasn’t the right size for Sherlock. The sleeves were too short.

 

Stretching, John pulled the robe on.

 

It fit perfectly.

 

John’s breath caught at that. The arousal from moments prior dissolved into pure affection. It wasn’t the most thoughtful thing a lover had ever done for him, but it had been years since anyone had known him well enough to buy clothes for him. It wasn’t unreasonable to think that Sherlock would know the correct size, considering he had been involved in the clothing purchases in Wiltshire, but somehow this was more intimate.

 

The fabric felt gorgeous.

 

In the sitting room Sherlock was obviously placing their order.

 

Was he speaking Siamese?

 

The only way to find out would be to ask, and the only way to do that would be to go out. John tied off his robe and headed out to make the requested tea.

 

Once he got out there, it seemed almost pointless to ask, as Sherlock twisted his lips and tongue around phrases that John was positive were simple but sounded like verbal acrobatics. Instead he turned into the kitchen to work on their tea.

 

The kitchen was more of a wreck than the rest of the flat. Obviously Sherlock lived on takeout and… thin air, if the state of the sink and cabinets were to be believed. John took one look at the jumble of things surrounding the electric kettle and decided he’d go for the old fashioned route instead. The dented copper kettle was on its side at the top of the mass of things in the sink. Wary of the mess, John checked it, but it was free of any of the decayed or petrified remains that dirtied the other dishes in the sink. The worst of the mess in the kettle was the ring where the water had left its mark.

 

Sherlock concluded his call with a satisfied look on his face, and took a moment to clean the couch with a sweep of his arm.

 

“What is all this junk, anyway?” John asked, filling the kettle and setting it on the hob to heat.

 

The most offended noise John had ever heard came out of Sherlock at that. “My filing system is far from _junk,_ John.”

 

“Maybe,” John said, turning to regard the tall man who had cleaned and then occupied the entire sofa in a sprawl that looked more cat-like than wolf-like. “What are you filing, exactly?”

 

“My research notes,” Sherlock said with a lofty snort, folding his hands behind his head.

 

Curious, John picked up one of the papers strewn across the kitchen table in no obvious order other than jumble, and read the frantic scrawl as best he could.

 

It was something to do with… dirt. The entire page was filled with notations about the soil quality in various parts of the city, with something that on quick inspection appeared to be a shorthand reference notation. John had never seen anything like it.

 

“I thought you did office work.”

 

“It’s a convenient method of meeting individuals with information pertinent to my interests,” Sherlock replied.

 

“And somehow your interests are… mud?”

 

“The consistency of mud in relation to splatter patterns,” Sherlock corrected.

 

“Right, sorry.”

 

Saved from that particular topic by the kettle, John busied himself in the kitchen. From the heap of glassware - it was amazing that the pile hadn’t broken or fallen onto the floor in a fit of pique - he liberated two mugs, which he washed on top of the other dishes with what looked to be an ancient (and barely used) bottle of dish soap.

 

By the time the mugs were clean and the tea was steeping, Sherlock was up and paying the delivery person. John looked up in time to see his mate locking the door and then turning with a flourish of the dressing gown he was wearing.

 

While the tea steeped, John looked for clean plates. The only ones he could see were at the bottom of the mess in the sink, and there was something that appeared to have solidified on the surface of them.

 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Sherlock said from behind him, amid the rustling of the bag, “forks.”

 

“I fail to see how looking for plates is ridiculous,” John replied, quirking a brow.

 

“I have been absent from London for more than six months,” Sherlock replied, taking the containers of food and settling them on the coffee table.

 

“You’ve been back since before I got here,” John replied. He gave up on liberating the plates and went through the drawers looking for silverware. Everything in the drawer that contained it was mismatched, but it was all clean. John liberated two forks from the mess, with spoons just in case, and headed into the sitting room.

 

“A fact **_I_** am well aware of,” Sherlock replied, with only a slight grinding of his teeth as he flopped back onto the sofa. He sat still only for a moment, and then leaned forward to the containers of food, as though he were too agitated to sit still.

 

John took the place beside him, wondering what time it was. The view through the windows was light, so it must be sometime in the morning, but that was all he could make out about it. There were no clocks in the flat, it seemed.

 

Well.

 

There were two that John could see - one that was mostly intact in the kitchen on the side of the hanging cupboards, and another on the bottom shelf of one of the bookcases that looked to have been taken to pieces for some reason - but neither of them worked.

 

“What time is it?” John asked, setting out the utensils as Sherlock opened the containers.

 

“Half eleven,” Sherlock replied absently, paying far too much attention to the food he was working on.

 

“Sherlock.”

 

“Mm.”

 

“What is it?”

 

“Nothing.”

 

John frowned. “Doesn’t sound like nothing.”

 

“Mm.”

 

“Look at me.”

 

It took a moment, but Sherlock reluctantly looked up at him.

 

“Tell me?” John asked.

 

It was strange saying those words to Sherlock. They were words he had spoken to others, of course, Harry a notable and continuing recipient of the request, but not his mate. Not that he hadn’t wanted to say those very words hundreds of times in that rotten little room they were locked in. Sherlock had become so incredibly important, but he hadn’t been able to ask then. And then in Wiltshire there had been so much the others expected of the two of them that John hadn’t pressed because even he felt the desire for privacy with all the attention they were getting.

 

John wouldn’t even think of that morning when Mycroft had collected him.

 

Now was different, though. Now he could ask. Now he could _listen._

 

“Tell me,” John repeated, reaching out a hand to Sherlock’s cheek.

 

Sherlock’s brows pulled together and he leaned over, pressing his forehead to John’s. The sudden closeness was a welcome surprise. John sighed and closed his eyes.

 

“You were gone twenty-one days. Twenty-two if you count the horrid morning in Wiltshire when you were taken.”

 

John’s eyes shot open. That long? It had been _that long?_ A shiver went through John at that, to think that so much time had passed and he hadn’t been able to mark the days as they went by. He wondered if it would have made it better or worse to know as it was happening, to know if-

 

“It is a conundrum. I do not make habit of retaining painful memories, and yet I cannot delete a moment of it,” Sherlock interrupted his thoughts.

 

“Delete?”

 

“Useless information clutters the mind,” Sherlock said, “so I delete it.”

  
That sounded simple, but John couldn’t quite wrap his mind around deleting anything. But then there was the yawn of days he couldn’t put his own number to, and-

 

Sherlock wrapped an arm around John’s neck and pulled him closer, kissing his lips gently. John relaxed at the contact without even thinking about it. “You, John,” Sherlock said with an unfamiliar glint in his eye. “I would never delete an instant of you.”

 

John slid his hand inside Sherlock’s dressing gown. His mate shifted to accommodate the gentle push, and John climbed onto Sherlock’s lap, because those were, possibly, the strangest words he’d ever heard spoken in devotion. They made no sense and yet they were correct, and John found himself shivering with desire at just the hearing of them. Nothing much about the way their relationship had begun was particularly romantic, at least not traditionally. That was fine, though. John wasn’t much for flowers and chocolate by candlelight, but those words were worth more than what could be packed into any of the cliches.

 

“You had not realized the number of days,” Sherlock said, speaking against his neck as nimble fingers undid the tie on John’s dressing gown.

 

“No,” John admitted.

 

Sherlock made a curious noise, the one he did when he was waiting for an answer. In this case, an explanation.

 

“Because time stopped without you,” John said, speaking before he had time to think about it.

 

It wouldn’t have mattered if he had. It wasn’t a romantic nothing he was whispering, considering the grayness that had descended on him the longer they were apart. That was the only true explanation he could think of for it.

 

Sherlock’s hands stilled and he stared wide-eyed at John, looking confused for a moment. He searched John’s expression, eyes darting cross his face, down his neck for a moment, and then back up. “You mean that,” he said.

 

John stroked his hands against Sherlock’s chest, feeling the warmth of skin and the smoothness of silk, and he nodded. “It was awful.”

 

In response, Sherlock took his lips with a needy growl. The kiss was heated, and the warmth of it and the warmth of Sherlock’s skin against his finally cast off the last of the chill of the nightmare.

 

The day’s stress had been mostly slept off, but the warmth that was being kissed back into him brought with it the euphoria from earlier.

 

John tugged at Sherlock’s dressing gown, still folded between them, and those nimble fingers tugged it away between them. John leaned forward into his mate. He could feel Sherlock’s erection twitch beneath him, and his own answered.

 

They fumbled dressing gowns open, and off in John’s case. Sherlock spread his legs and planted his feet, gripped John by the waist, and John wrapped a hand around their needy erections. Sherlock’s hand wrapped around John’s, tightening the grip on them, and then they were both thrusting. For a few pushes of hips it was too dry to be comfortable. Sherlock stilled John by tightening the arm around his waist and loosened their hands. He lifted his to John’s mouth.

 

Sherlock leaned forward enough to breathe a command into John’s ear. “Suck,” he said, crisp consonants sending a shiver through John. John parted his lips to Sherlock’s hand, and did as he was told. Sherlock watched, licking his own lips. “Give me yours.”

 

John lifted his hand obligingly, stifling the noise of protest he felt at having all the warmth gone around them. Sherlock gave a shallow thrust against him and parted his lips to John’s fingers.

 

When Sherlock’s tongue slid out to stroke John’s fingers, John _had to_ thrust their hips together. There wasn’t enough friction, but watching what Sherlock was doing with his mouth would make John lose it if he didn’t do _something._ He sucked hard on Sherlock’s fingers between his lips. The man was talented with his mouth, no matter what he chose to do with it. Too soon Sherlock decided John’s hand was damp enough, because he stopped, and slid his hand away. They wrapped their hands back around the hard lengths of them, and that was just it.

 

They were out of practice, but they knew each other’s bodies well. Sherlock let John set the pace, capturing John’s lips when he planted a hand on the back of the couch for a bit of balance. It felt too good, after so long. John had to close his eyes and try to distract himself to keep from losing it before Sherlock.

 

Sherlock pulled away from the kiss, pressing their foreheads together. “Don’t,” he rumbled, tightening the arm around his waist. “I need to feel you.”

 

John opened his eyes, and found Sherlock staring into his. Their lips came together again, and John didn’t fight the building tension. He managed one more thrust before he spilled himself, head arching back.

 

Everything went white with pleasure.

 

His eyes squeezed shut with it. John opened them again, and found that Sherlock had very pale freckles on his neck. His mate’s arms were tight around him, stroking his back and keeping him close.

 

“Welcome home, John,” Sherlock rumbled.

 

John smiled into Sherlock’s neck. They were a mess. The flat was a bit of a wreck, the kitchen a disaster zone, and under normal circumstances John would have taken one look at it all and turned right back around and headed back out the door. But John’s normal was different now, and Sherlock was here.

 

Sherlock, who wound himself around John like an octopus, chewed on him absently when he was thinking, and regularly fucked the thoughts right out of John’s head.

 

Sherlock, who John had missed like oxygen.

 

Sherlock, his mate.

 

There were things that would have to happen to fit John into Sherlock’s life, to physically shoehorn him into the flat and make it more livable by his standards. And there was John’s family to see to, because Harry would be calling (she was a Watson, afterall). And if it had been over twenty days, then it would be just about the time for the moon, which meant going back out to Wiltshire. But they would work all that out later. They had time.

 

In the kitchen, the tea had to have over-steeped. On the little table behind John the food was likely cold. There was only one thing that was important just now.

 

John was home, at last.

 

“Ta,” John sighed into Sherlock’s neck in reply.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So then, beloved readers, this chapter concludes **Privation**.
> 
> I'll take this note down when I put the next story in the series up, but I wanted to let everyone who's following the stories know that it will probably be around the weekend of September 13th before I put up the next story in the series. I have Maid of Honor duties to attend to, and we have a big work deadline. I beta for myself, and I won't sacrifice the quality of what you're reading because I have a time crunch on my hands. I'd like it to be another ten years before I get any gray hairs.
> 
> That said. The best way to keep track of when the next story starts is going to be to subscribe to the [series itself. ](http://archiveofourown.org/series/92836)
> 
> Life things happen and my goal of the 13th for a new finished chapter may fall flat. I can already tell you (without too much complaint) that Sherlock's a bit surly about it. (It makes the story so much fun when he takes to snarling and pouting.)
> 
> Thank you all very much for reading, and I will see you soon!

**Author's Note:**

>  **pri·va·tion** /prīˈvāSHən/  
>  _noun_
> 
> 1\. a state in which things that are essential for human well-being such as food and warmth are scarce or lacking.
> 
> 2\. (formal) the loss or absence of a quality or attribute that is normally present.


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